D.I.Y. Artisan

I have been in the US for more than thirty years now, arriving when I was six years old. I am what most in my family would call an American. And to some extent, I do feel that I have assimilated into the American culture- I can speak American English well, I understand our jokes, our idioms and our slang. I only think in English now. I am married to an American and have adopted a very American way of living. Yet on any given Saturday or Sunday, at about 3 or 4:00, I experience a very Filipino craving

This is one of the easiest cooked cheeses I have ever made and I am excited so share this with you, especially if you have NEVER made cheese before. The recipe I give is a bit different than what you would find in recipes online. After doing some research, I discovered that ‘Farmer’s Cheese’ refers to any kind of unripened cheese by adding bacterial starter or rennet to acidify the milk. Farmer’s Cheese can be made with milk from cows, sheep or goats.

I recently bough a Mar-Crest Daisy Dot Ceramic Baker (http://www.mar-crest.com/pictures.html) during a long weekend trip to Calaveras County. I’m an avid visitor to second-hand shops so when we ran across one during our trip, I wandered in and found myself examining chairs, glassware, and other assorted household ephemera. The husband geek called me over to where he was standing and pointed out this dark brown pot that he thought I might like. I was dark brown and shiny with these cute little dots and lines made to look like little daisies. It had a cover and when I looked inside the pot, I realized it was quite deep and roomy.

Call me Prairie Girl but I love the idea of making your own bread. I’m not a talented girl, I can’t dance or sing well, I don’t know how to ride a bike and swimming is still a new skill for me, but darn it, I bake good bread. Even my mistake breads are tasty.

I love fats, melted or otherwise. I know it’s not a politically-correct thing to say, but I know I’m not alone. Julia Child, whom I admire greatly, was known to say that we shouldn’t be afraid of fat, we should just know how to manage it better. I go through life with that mantra echoing in my head. I’ve been known to gnaw on a piece of crunchy, chewy fat from my steak and unlady-like as it sounds, I get a tremendous satisfaction from it and I’m not ashamed to say it either!

While I can be extremely generous and sometimes free with many things, I sometimes revert to the frugal part of my personality. This becomes even more apparent when I am grocery shopping: I can’t resist a deal. So when I ran across the discount produce bin at Dan’s Produce in Alameda, I had to stop and look. I found a big bag of small red onions marked 99 cents.